'You do not have to have big offices in a big building to have a publishing house.' An Interview with Nyana Kakoma.

Without writers, there are no publishers; without publishers there are no writers. Chicken and egg situation, for sure. From time to time Short Story Day Africa likes to look at the bloggers, the facilitators, the businessmen/women - the small but mighty links that hold African literature together. We sat down with Nyana Kakoma, whose go-getter attitude and ascendant career trajectory is something to behold. We spoke about her beginnings, her new publishing house and challenges facing the business end of African literature.

Nyana, I have watched you go from an intern at Modjaji Books, to a blog for short stories and poetry to now a publisher. Could you explain how each step pushed you to do more, get bigger and, perhaps, braver?

NYANA: It has really been a step-by-step journey. When I started my blog it was because I had always wanted to have a platform where Ugandan literature would be showcased. I did not know that the kind of platform I wanted was a blog until I quit my job to move back to Kampala (I used to work upcountry) and just started with what I had.

When I started the blog I realised that whereas I had experience as a non-fiction editor (I had worked as a sub-editor in one of our leading dailies) I did not have experience as a fiction editor. And I was getting a lot of fiction on the blog.

So I started teaching myself here and there but the editorial internship with Commonwealth Writers and African Writers Trust under the guidance of Ellah Wakatama Allfrey and Vimbai Shire was what really helped me understand what I was doing. I started to take myself more seriously as an editor and I sucked up as much knowledge as I could.

From that workshop came the internship with Modjaji which showed me how an independent press works. It showed me that you did not have to have big offices in a big building to have a publishing house. It taught me the practical process in publishing; talking to writers, talking to the web people, reading real manuscripts (which excited me a great deal), organising a book launch, talking to bookshop owners - you know everything I had learnt at the editorial workshop. I also saw from Colleen [Higgs] how far passion could take you and I needed to see that.

Modjaji made me want more and actually believe I could do more. And yet, I can’t say that when I was on the plane from Cape Town I believed I was coming back home to start a publishing house. Not even then. It was after I had gotten home that the desire to start a publishing house couldn’t be ignored anymore. And even then, I had a lot of self-doubt to overcome.

Sooo Many Stories, your press, has made the bold choice of publishing a collection of poetry, The Headline That Morning, as its first title. Why poetry? Also, why does Peter Kagayi's collection come with a CD?

NYANA: It was Peter Kagayi. His voice, his conviction. I believed straight away that what he was saying needed to be said and listened to. I had seen him perform but something else happened when I actually read the poems and I wanted to be a part of amplifying his voice. So for me it did not really matter what genre it was as long as the message got me.

Why the CD? Sooo Many Stories believes that stories should be accessible. I have seen a number of people shy away from reading poetry but you will see them at a recital. To them, the reading part may seem difficult because of an education system made a chore of reading and yet, they do enjoy performed poetry. So the CD is for those people. It’s in the hope that once they listen to the CD they will realise that it isn’t that hard and hopefully they will pick up the book. But also, Kagayi is great with performance (again, his conviction) and I thought it would be great for people to see that side of him as well.

What is Sooo Many Stories going to do differently when it comes to editing and marketing their titles?

NYANA: Those are actually the two areas I decided I would never skimp on. I decided that we would only work with people that understood what real editing is, not people that think that as long as you can construct an English sentence, you can edit (a common belief). I want to work with people that will bring out the best in our writing and people the writers will trust.

With marketing, I knew when I started that is not my strength so the first thing I did was read as much as I could (still do) on marketing and also hire someone that would help out. Vaola Amumpaire joined SmsUg sometime before we launched The Headline That Morning and she’s been great. We also did a market survey just before we started just so we could understand what we were getting into. Some of our marketing decisions have been based on the information we got. And so when I go out and people ask, “Why would you get into publishing when the poor reading culture is so evident?” I am actually aware of the numbers and the reasons why. For example one of the reasons people gave for not buying Ugandan books was that the ones they have bought are poorly edited and they do not look good. And those are some of the things we decided we would address with our books.

We are also trying to make the books as accessible as possible.

African literature struggles to distribute titles across the continent. Any ideas or goals of teaming up with other indie publishers in order to get works read beyond Uganda's boarders?

NYANA: We are talking to some people outside Uganda and people have been quite helpful and very willing to help. But co-publishing or just distributing has to make financial sense to them so we are waiting to see how that works out.

You are a writer, yourself. Are you having to set that part of yourself aside to bring the publishing self forward? Or are you managing to interweave your own pen while raising up the work of others?

NYANA: I am putting my writing to the side for a bit mostly because I haven’t yet figured out how to balance all my new responsibilities (being a mum to my 8 month old baby while running a new business and taking care of other aspects of my life).

On Nyana's Bedside

Rereading Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How To Tell Your Story In A Noisy World by Gary Vaynerchuk that talks about social media marketing. I am reading a lot of these types of books because I need to learn more about marketing and other aspects of running a business.

Nyana Kakoma is a Ugandan writer, editor, blogger and publisher. She created the online platform Sooo Many Stories to promote and showcase Ugandan literature and it has now grown into a print publishing house. Before venturing into fiction writing, she worked for The New Vision and The Daily Monitor as a reporter and sub-editor. She also worked as the group Magazine Editor for Madhvani Group. 

Nyana has been published in The Suubi Collection, online, The Caine Prize Anthology (2013), Jalada, The Storymoja blog and kampalawritesbremen.com. She has facilitated writing workshops with Writivism and Tukosawa Stars (a writing workshop for secondary school students with FEMRITE). She has given talks on publishing and writing at FEMRITE Readers/Writers Club, ACME and African Writers Trust Editorial Workshop. She is a member of Femrite and one of the founding members of Jalada, a PanAfrican collective of writers.

Interview by Tiah Beautement a.k.a @ms_tiahmarie

'I find thinking about an audience distracting.' An Interview With Charlotte Otter.

Charlotte Otter's crime novels feature a gusty feminist protagonist. No surprise then that she's published by Modjaji Books, one of Africa's finest independent publishers focussing on fiction written by women.  She chatted to SSDA about writing, feminism and getting her character to face her inherent privilege. 

We read your first book, Balthasar's Gift. Where is the second book, Karkloof Blue, taking your heroine Maggie Cloete? 

CHARLOTTE: In Karkloof Blue, I bring Maggie into the present, a world with social media, load shedding and even deeper levels of corruption. She returns to Pietermaritzburg after stints in Joburg and Berlin as a day news editor on The Gazette. When an environmental activist commits suicide by throwing himself off the Howick Falls, and the forestry company where he worked is poised to log a piece of natural forest that is the last remaining habitat of the Karkloof Blue, Maggie sniffs conspiracy. However, as always in South Africa, the past rises up to confront the present, and she finds she is dealing with much more than corporate greed.

Your heroine, Maggie Cloete, is a gutsy, strong willed and determined person that feminists get behind. But she also brings out classism. Can you tell us a bit more about why this mattered to you?

CHARLOTTE: I believe in intersectionality - the idea that race, class and gender interconnect to create overlapping layers of discrimination (or privilege). So much of the debate that’s going on in South Africa right now is about people refusing to acknowledge that their privilege has given them advantages. Maggie is from a working-class Afrikaans background, so she is outside the realms of the privileged and is able to take a critical stance. I like her outsider perspective - that is very useful in fiction. However, Maggie is also white and that brings her advantages. I plan to deal with her growing realization of these in the next novel.

"I hate writing, I love having written." Dorothy Parker  – Do you enjoy the act of writing, or are you more of a Dorothy?

CHARLOTTE: I have days when writing is as gentle and smooth as floating down a wide river on a barge, and days when it is like being stuck in concrete with angry ants crawling up my legs. On the river days, there is almost nothing I love more; on the concrete days it is dire. However, when my writing is done for the day (I write between 4 and 6am), I am calm and better able to deal with the slings and arrows of life, no matter how good or bad the session was. So probably, I am a bit of both.

Do you find it easy to let go and allow the reader to find their own meaning in your work? Are you ever tempted to correct reviewers when the interpret something you had not intended?

CHARLOTTE: I can let go, but I have been tempted to correct a reviewer once. However, I was a grown-up and turned away instead of engaging, much like one does with a toddler having a tantrum. When it is clear that a reader or a reviewer has really got the book and my project in writing it, it is a lovely thing.

Do you keep an ideal reader in mind when you write?

CHARLOTTE: No. I find thinking about an audience distracting. Someone once said to me you should write as if for your very best friend because then your tone is warm and intimate. I like that idea, but I write for my protagonist and characters - I want to do them and their story justice.

What is your experience of publishing in both Germany and South Africa?

CHARLOTTE: Very positive. I am eternally grateful to my German publisher, Else Laudan, for being the first person in the industry to see Maggie’s potential. I love working with Else - she has been publishing crime fiction by women for over 20 years and has a very specific feminist project, a strong instinct for what works creatively, as well as an attention to detail that is just remarkable. The translation process is very intense and we work closely together, ironing out issues that she perceives. This makes the English version of the novel much stronger. I was thrilled when Colleen Higgs of Modjaji [Books] followed Else’s lead.

On Charlotte's Bedside Table

I am a catholic and greedy reader, and my greed is fed by the joyous thing that is the e-reader. Right now, I am on a non-fiction jag. I have just read Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir by Lauren Slater about her experiences with epilepsy (or not - one isn’t entirely sure), I am currently reading Drink: The Deadly Relationship between Women and Alcohol by Ann Dowsett Johnston, and I am poised to read Rebecca Davis’ essays Best White and Other Anxious Delusions.

Charlotte Otter is a South African writer living in Germany. A former crime reporter, she now works in IT communications and writes feminist crime fiction set in her hometown of Pietermaritzburg. 

Interview by Tiah Beautement a.k.a @ms_tiahmarie 

‘In my storytelling I privilege the micro.’ An Interview with Yewande Omotoso.

Yewande Omotoso needs no introduction to African fiction lovers. Her debut novel, Bom Boy, was highly acclaimed, and her second highly anticipated novel, The Woman Next Door, has recently been published. Here she shares some of her measured and astute observations.

After finishing The Woman Next Door, I was struck by how you strive to write in opposition to the phrase, "Write what you know". In your debut novel, Bom Boy, your main character was a young man who was adopted by white parents. Now, in your current story, we have two older women who have survived rather tricky marriages. What attracts you to writing what you don't know?

YEWANDE:  I won’t say I set out to write what I don’t know. In fact a current struggle is that I can’t allow myself to write, as main characters, people whose first languages I don’t speak. Since I only speak English with any competence it means (in accordance with ‘write what you know’) I’m, for the moment anyway, caught writing first language English speakers. I hope to get free of this.

Back to the question, while I’m not specifically attracted to writing what I don’t know, I do seek to write what preoccupies me. With Bom Boy the story came out of a preoccupation with solitude and, for whatever reason, the character came as a boy. As in I don’t have a moment when I get to decide what gender race or age the characters are. They kind of materialise and there they are. With The Woman Next Door, perhaps after spending some time with my grandmother, I became preoccupied with (amongst other things) what it might be like to have the bulk of your life behind you.

The other thing is I do feel connection to the characters. I don’t write thinking, wow, these people are so different to me. I write thinking, in some ways we’re not all as different as we’d like to believe. I think part of the important work of life is to get connected, be connected, see ourselves in others.

You wrote, "It saddened her that what she considered the best thing about herself was a puzzle to her husband."

Both your main characters are, in many ways, islands of themselves. The people in their every day – spouses and, for one, her children – do not know them well. Do you think this holds true, in some manner, for most people?  

YEWANDE: I couldn’t say, with certainty, what holds true for most. However I do think there is complexity to being human. Do we hide parts of ourselves from others? Or do parts of what we are remain unknown, for whatever innocent reason, even from our dearest? Do we even know ourselves fully? And if we know ourselves or others as one thing does it mean we or they are not (or could never be) another?

This is where my interest lies, in exploring those gaps in knowing, the unsaid. I think that’s where the stories are.

"Hating, after all, was a drier form of drowning."

In South Africa people often become caught up in seeing hate as something that exists in the macro: race, gender, xenophobia and religion. While race and class are present in The Woman Next Door, the biggest examples of hate are in the micro – neighbours, children, husband and, perhaps, employees. Why is the micro important in storytelling?

YEWANDE: I think seeing hate in the macro is the habit of not only South Africans but humanity in general. What we miss is that the reason hate is there in the macro is because it’s there in the micro. And while yes we need to tackle institutions (because in many scenarios hate has no face which is what helps keep it in place) we also need to deal with ourselves and our neighbours, our friends and so on. It’s easier to say corruption and look at big things like Government and the Police Force. When we run a light are we corrupting something? When we drive above the limit are we corrupting?

In my storytelling I privilege the micro. That’s what I’m obsessed with and fascinated by, those minute human-scale details. My hunch is there are clues in there.

For an African writer living and writing on the African continent, you've received a lot of press. Which is, I am sure, great for your career. But is there a pressure, too, at being so visible?

YEWANDE: Not sure what the definition of “a lot” is here. I think there are several writers living on the continent and I also think there is an interest in what they are writing, doing and saying. This is essentially good. Does the attention and visibility create pressure? Well, I think it’s important to always remember what the job is. The job is not to be pressured or even to be visible. The job, before any other, is surely to write and write well. My ideal scenario (and what I believe is most conducive to productivity) is for the work to be visible, the person who made it mostly ought to disappear.

The term "African Lit" sparks many opinions, debates and conversations. Is there a conversation that is being overlooked? What should readers, writers and publishers be talking about in regards to the literature being born on the continent?

YEWANDE: I don’t like to push any shoulds because, who knows, really? But I think we could talk more about language. English, French, Portuguese but more importantly Hausa, Yoruba, Zulu, Swahili, Fanti and so on. We could talk about translation, set up schools and courses. I think we need to celebrate but also breed more critics and reviewers. We could talk about non-fiction. We could talk about how we distribute books across the continent, how do we ensure we’re reading each other – things like that.

On Yewande's Bedside Table

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler, The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin, Second Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta, Unimportance by Thando Mgqolozana, Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi, A Bit Of Difference by Sefi Atta

Currently reading Sweet Medicine by Panashe Chigumadzi
 

Yewande Omotoso is an architect with a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. Her debut novel ‘Bom Boy’ (Modjaji Books, 2011), was shortlisted for the 2012 Sunday Times Fiction Prize. Yewande was a 2013 Norman Mailer Fellow and a 2014 Etisalat Fellow. She was a 2015 Miles Morland Scholar. ‘The Woman Next Door’ (Chatto and Windus, 2016) is Yewande’s second novel.

Interview by Tiah Beautement a.k.a @ms_tiahmarie 

Photo of Yewande by Victor Dlamini a.k.a @victordlamini